


Tell the Stars I'm Coming Home

by allthebros



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, End of the World, Future Fic, Grief, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 15:09:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13615974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: “Once again, if you’re just tuning in, Deliverance has been destroyed. The final mission to save mankind has failed. The eight-mile wide asteroid, commonly known as Matilda, is set to collide with Earth in exactly three weeks time, and—Jonny and Patrick have three weeks left to live. Three weeks to find their way back to each other.





	Tell the Stars I'm Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a fusion of the movie _Seeking a Friend for the End of the World_. It was started a year ago for the movie fest, then was abandoned, and I picked it up again a few months ago. The premise (and ending if you've seen it) is the same, but it's set in "canon". 
> 
> **NOTES**  
>  \+ Even though there is no main character death in the fic (and there won't be), the story deals heavily with upcoming death, dying, and grief. With that urgency and with last chances. The characters are in a "not a lot of time left to live" situation. Furthermore, in the fic, Jonny's dad has been dead for a few years and that grief is prominent in the story as well, especially in the first two parts.  
> \+ Heavy on the internalized homophobia.  
> \+ Smoking, and some mentions of recreational drug use.  
> \+ There is a brief Jonny/OMC scene in the first part.  
> \+ All the main tags are there, but make sure to check them over again when future parts are posted, just in case.  
> \+ THERE'S A LOT OF LOVE AND HAPPINESS COMING UP I SWEAR!!! But you gotta go through ANGST first haha  
> \+ The ending might be considered more bittersweet by some. I think of it as happy, considering, and I put the tag there because I didn't want it to look like THIS IS THE GRIMMEST THING TO GRIMDARK. But take into account all the other tags and the premise and decide for yourself.  
> \+ If you have any questions/concerns please leave a comment or message me on tumblr (same username)
> 
>  **THANKS**  
>  This is the hardest thing I've ever written and it would not have been possible without:  
> \+ sorrylatenew, saudades, and jezziejay: for being the blunt, harsh betas I wanted and needed, for the wonderful, positive and encouraging feedback and comments. All mistakes and weaknesses left are utterly my own.  
> \+ sorrylatenew, again. Infinite gratitude. For the beta, but most importantly for letting me send it to you in bits and pieces, for brainstorming it A LOT with me, for your patience and support. I don't know what I'd do without yooouuuu <333  
> \+ And finally, thank you, thank you, to everyone on twitter and tumblr who have shown support and enthusiasm for this fic and the pieces of it I shared, and who have cheered me on. It's very very much appreciate.
> 
>  
> 
>  

 

 

Jonathan is two weeks away from his 36th birthday when he learns he’s going to die.

Patrick crashes through his door, coming in without knocking, as always, and voices what Jonny was just thinking: “We gotta get out.”

Outside, the city is bright in the night—lights and neon signs and nauseating oranges and reds projected against the black sky.

Chicago is burning.

 

◉

 

“Where’s Jess?” Jonny shoves clothes in a duffel bag and checks the dresser, the small table in the corner, the laundry basket. He skips over the pictures on the walls and picks up the book he’s currently reading from the bedside table. “Patrick?”

Jonny’s out of the door in an instant, bag over his shoulder. His feet stick to the hardwood floor and he knocks a picture frame with his elbow as he jogs past it. Out of habit, he stops to straighten it. 

His mom bought him this painting. It’s the only piece of art in his house he truly loves. She saw it at an artist fair up in Winnipeg, the first summer on her own, before she moved permanently to the house in Kenora. It reminds Jonny of his father—something in the blue shades, the vast sky. He suspects it’s the reason why she bought it, too, and not to ‘fill that dreadfully bare hallway of yours.’ 

His fingers on the frame’s corner, long and pale against black, don’t look or feel like they’re his at all. He squeezes the corner until the grooves dig in his skin. He won’t come back here.

It slots in his mind like a slow boulder, rough and grinding and impossible to ignore: from now on, everything he does, every place he goes to, everyone he sees, will be for the last time. 

Panic surges inside him dark and wild and grips him at the throat. He runs to the living room, catching the edge of the wall as he turns the corner, and shouts, “Patrick!” just to be gut-punched by relief when he sees him there, a picture of their 2013 cup win in his hands. 

Jonny grabs it and shoves it in his bag instead of placing it back on the shelf. His head swims from the whiplash and a scared, urgent cry tries to scrabble out of him. He shoves it back down.

“Patrick.” He repeats it again, “Kaner,” too loud, a strong grasp on Patrick’s shoulder that bunches up his shirt. And he means to say more, searching for that place within himself he always finds in the locker room, the right words at the right time to get the guys going, to bring the fight back into their faces and limbs. But Patrick stares up at him with wide eyes, and Jonny’s got nothing, only a heart that knocks against his ribcage and a lump in his throat he can barely inhale past. So he gives Patrick’s shoulder a shake and repeats, “Where’s Jess?” on his way back to the bedroom. 

He picks up a picture of his dad from the wall over the dresser—the fishing trip they went on, just the two of them, the summer before he got too sick to do anything—and slips it in his bag as well. He pulls out a shirt to make some space. There’s a hoarse sound in his ears and it takes him a beat to realize it’s him—breath quick, irregular, and loud between his lips. 

In his walk-in closet, all his shoes are lined against the wall, and he’ll never wear any of them again. None of the suits, either. Not his grey winter coat, or any of his Hawks hats, and he’s never going to see Chicago again and he’s going to die.

“She had to run to her place to grab some stuff. Her passport. We gotta pick her up,” Patrick says from the doorway. He looks calm, but Jonny knows him well enough to recognize the restraint he’s exerting on himself. When they were younger, it made Jonny want to punch him in the face, made him want to push him around until Patrick was as loud and angry as Jonny felt. But now, it has the opposite effect. He’s not alone. 

“Where’s your bag?” Jonny asks.

Patrick drags his eyes up from Jonny’s feet. “You’ll wear flip flops ‘til the end, Toews?” His mouth crooks at the corner. He clenches his jaw. “It’s at my place.”

Jonny curls his toes in his sandals. “Go get it. We’re not coming back.”

Patrick licks his lips, eyes wide again, and there’s dread there, true fear Jonny’s rarely seen on him in all the years they’ve known each other. Jonny closes his fists, opens his mouth with the same impulse again, to say something about how they’ve got this, they can do this. 

The fire alarm goes off. Screams rise from the street. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says, but Jonny doesn’t hear him over the noise, only watches his lips form the word.

They meet no one on the way down to the parking lot, and it’s freakier than if they’d met a wave of their neighbours. It’s only them and the continuous blaring of the fire alarm. They run down the stairs. Jonny’s foot slips on the edge of a step and he catches himself on the railing with a bang they both can hear over the din. Patrick turns around and grips Jonny’s pocket to hold him steady.

They stare at each other, petrified, and Jonny knows the barely restrained distress on Patrick’s face is mirrored on his own. He licks his lips. “Go.” And they’re off again. 

The alarm is even louder in the garage, the noise bouncing off the concrete. Jonny stops. Maybe this isn’t a fluke. Maybe there’s a fire. Maybe all of this will burn to the ground and be ashes in the morning and it won’t matter because they’re never coming back. But there are years of Jonny’s life in his place upstairs. 

He should have grabbed the painting.

It doesn’t matter. 

They get to Jess’ place easily—she doesn’t live far. She runs out as soon as Patrick lowers the window to wave at her, and slips into the backseat. 

“I tried calling mom”—she leans forward to talk to Patrick as Jonny pulls away and floors it—“but there was no answer. My texts didn’t go through. I think the system’s overloaded or something.”

Jonny glances in the mirror at her. Her eyes are red, but her hair is tight in a practical ponytail and her voice is calm. Fuck that stupid Kane aplomb. Fuck it. Jonny wants to scream.

He avoids the main streets. They get glances of crowds in between buildings, of people throwing shit in store windows. Others stand outside, eyes on the sky as if they could see it now, even through the glare of Chicago’s lights, of Chicago’s fires. They’re ghosts, he thinks, they’re already gone. Motionless in their pyjamas with their gaze fixed upon the stars, Jonny wants to lower his window and shout at them to call their mothers or some ridiculous shit his own mother would say. 

Of course, O’Hare is a nightmare. 

There aren’t any spaces left so he double parks behind a red pickup. He’s not coming back for his car, and neither is the truck owner, so it doesn’t matter.

Inside, it’s utter chaos—loud, crammed, people in various states of panic and anger. They yell, they cry, they want out of this city. 

Fear and desperation have an acrid smell, it turns out, like sour milk and sweat and smoke. 

“We should have left days ago,” Jess says. Her voice shakes and she swallows thickly, her hand clutched tight around her passport and her now-useless boarding pass. 

It’s an empty wish and they all know it. Patrick and Jess couldn’t have left earlier even if they’d wanted to. Their plane tickets to Hawaii dated 3 days from now were the earliest they had managed to get when it was obvious there was no point waiting for hockey to come back, for work to resume.

“Patrick,” she says, lost and scared. “What if—”

“Let’s go and see if there’s even a flight,” Patrick says, hand on her back. 

There’s a horde in front of them, pressing against each other, and Jonny watches as Patrick braces himself—that steely, determined expression he gets when he plays, fixed on his goal—and his insides twist painfully. He’ll never see Patrick look this way again or any other way. There will never be another hockey season and Patrick is leaving. He’s leaving. 

No.

Jonny grabs him by the arm, head full of visions of Patrick and Jess vanishing into the crowd and then on a plane before Jonny can say goodbye.

“Meet me here when you’re done.” He squeezes Patrick’s arm then shakes it, tilts his head toward the corner and the benches there. “Before you go.”

Patrick looks up at him sharply, as if he’s just realized as well what this means. Jonny’s is full of all the things he’s never said to him, silly things because they’re implied and known and it doesn’t matter if you say them or not. Like thank you, and I’m sorry, and I fucking hate your lime green sneakers. They push to get out, crowd his mouth because he can’t think of the bigger things he should say, the meaningful ones that would all amount to mean goodbye because they’ll never see each other again. Never.

A wave of people comes in and they’re pushed to the side, pushed apart, and all at once there are five, ten bodies between them.

“Meet me there before you leave!” Jonny yells over their heads and the noise. Patrick nods and it’s the last thing Jonny sees before him and Jess are swallowed by the crowd.

He forces his own way to the Air Canada desks. His best bet, he thinks. Once in line, he feels no guilt in using his body to keep his place. 

There are no flights to Winnipeg. 

“What’s the closest you’ve got?” Jonny asks the woman behind the desk. He rudely shoves back when pushed from behind and yelled at to hurry the fuck up. 

“Toronto.” Her uniform is askew, her hair in disarray. She has no makeup on, and her eyes are red.

“Will I be able to rent a car there?”

She shrugs, shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Her lip trembles. “I’m going home after this. We all are. My daughter—I really don’t know, sir. I don’t know. I don’t—“

“Do you know if there are other airlines with flights to Winnipeg?”

She types in her computer. “Not that I see. But—They’ve been changing things quickly, maybe there’s one but it’s not—Not now. Not soon. Unless it changes. I don’t know—“

“It’s okay.” Jonny raises a hand and gives her a strained smile. It’s not her fault. It not any of their faults. He doesn’t want to fight about this, even though there’s a scream in his head that hasn’t stopped since he heard the news. “It’s fine. You, uh, you have a nice… uh.” Day. Week. Weeks. Rest of life. 

He presses himself in a corner by a column to let a mom and her two kids past, then slips behind it and sinks to the floor with a loud thump, wrung-out the same way he is coming off a long, difficult shift on the ice. He leans his forehead on his knees and inhales deeply. He counts to ten. Exhales. Does it again. 

When he’s calmer, he fishes his phone out of his back pocket.

His first two texts fail, so he switches to email but the page won’t load—times out twice before he gives up and tries to call. But it’s like Jess said, nothing goes through. 

It’ll be fine, he’ll see them soon. He’ll just drive. He can’t know for sure if things will settle down here, and the thought of having to wait in line, stuck with everybody else, makes him want to punch the wall in front of him. 

Fuck. He should have left days ago.

When he gets back to where they said they’d meet, he spots Patrick and Jess immediately--he’s holding her by the shoulders and she’s yelling at him although Jonny can’t hear her words. Her face is red and puffy, her cheeks wet.

He presses forward faster, pushes a man out of his way and doesn’t even bother to apologize. 

“—can’t do that, Patrick! You can’t!”

Patrick drags her into his arms and holds her tight. He sees Jonny and shakes his head, eyes as red and puffy as hers, cheeks as wet. 

“What—?” Jonny starts, but Jess hears him and turns around quickly, brushing off Patrick’s hands.

“Jonny, tell him he can’t do this, tell him he has to—there’ll be another plane. Let’s drive to—somewhere. Somewhere else with an airport and we’ll find another flight. There’ll be one.”

Patrick turns dull eyes on him and Jonny takes a step closer to them instinctively, turns his back to the crowd so it’s just the three of them.

“Only got one ticket on the last flight to Hawaii,” Patrick says, simply.

Jess bursts into tears again. “I’ll stay with you.”

“You gotta go, Jess. I want you to. I—it’s okay.” His voice breaks on the last word and Jonny’s light-headed. He reaches out for him but doesn’t know what to do, where to put his hand. 

“I can’t leave you alone.”

“He won’t be,” Jonny says without hesitation, taking Jess’ hand. He’s come to like her a lot these past few years since she’s moved to Chicago. They’re buddies. Patrick keeps working his jaw like he’s biting down on something hard, and Jonny looks at him for a long moment. “We’ll drive.”

Patrick blinks and his eyes fill. He turns his head away. Jonny squeezes Jess’ hand to reassure her but his eyes don’t move away from Patrick’s profile—the upturned nose, the two days’ scruff, the barely held back sorrow.

“Okay,” Jess says, soft and wet. She takes her phone out of her bag with trembling hands and pushes it against Patrick’s chest. “Okay, use this.” Patrick takes the phone, confused. “For mom,” she adds.

Jonny tries to shield them with his body, to offer some privacy as both of them sit on the seats in the corner and Patrick hunches over Jess’ phone between his hands, too close to the camera as he records a video for his family.

Jonny thinks of his father, pale and frail in his hospital bed. Nothing and no one can ever teach you how to say goodbye. That day, he’d held his father’s hand and had tried to find the words to tell him—everything, but it hadn’t felt like enough, like anything could ever be enough. He was just left with the bitter, grasping hope that his father understood and knew, at the end. 

He texts his mom, _where are you? I’m driving to Winnipeg. Is David with you?_ and hopes she gets it. 

Patrick has to restart his video five times, has to stop to wipe at his face. “Fuck,” he says to the blank screen between his hands. “What do I even—“

Jonny can’t help him. When he closes his eyes and tries to think of reassuring words, all he sees is a vast, blue sky and all he feels is the phantom touch of his father’s rough fingers in his hand, and that’s no help at all. 

When he’s done, Patrick straightens up and passes the phone to Jess.

“You tell them… I don’t know how long the phones will work, so you tell them.”

“I know.” She holds the phone to her chest with her ticket and passport. She shakes. “Oh god, I can’t.”

“You can. You have to. You have to go now before they give your seat to someone else. Jess, please. Come on.”

“Patrick—“

“I’ll keep looking,” Patrick says with a quick glance at Jonny. “I’ll keep looking, but you have to take that plane, okay? You have to tell them. For me. I’ll never forgive myself if you get stuck here.” 

Jonny picks up Jess’ bag and they walk her to the boarding area where more guards than usual stand, the same look of terror on their faces as is on everyone else’s. 

“You really have to go before things get worse,” he says. He hugs her and kisses her temple. 

“I know you’ll take care of him,” she whispers into his ear. “Be happy, Jonny.”

“I will, and I’ll try.”

Patrick holds her for a long time, and Jonny has to look away from them, from the heartbreaking way they cling at each other. He can’t stop thinking of his dad. He wonders where David is. He still wants to scream.

“I love you,” she says to Patrick. She takes a step away. Then another. And then she’s gone, lost in the crowd.

Patrick stares blankly in front of him and Jonny waits him out, close to him—unable to not be, terrified of it, even. His phone is still silent in his hand.

Then Patrick blinks, says, “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” and turns away.

 

◉

__

 

“— _massive explosion killing everyone aboard. Once again, if you’re just tuning in, Deliverance has been destroyed. The final mission to save mankind has failed. The eight-mile wide asteroid, commonly known as Matilda, is set to collide with Earth in exactly three weeks time, and—_ "

“We know, we know, we know!” Patrick slams his hand on the radio knob several times, startling Jonny. “Oh my god, shut the fuck up. Shut up.”

“Patrick…”

It took them hours to get out of Chicago and they still haven’t slept. The interstate was still moving at a glacial pace when Jonny swerved into a random exit and decided to take the small roads instead. Jonny thought Patrick would crash at one point, but he’d just stared out the window without a word the whole night.

The sun now peeks above the tree line, and the sky is full of pinks and yellows, shadows still grey on the ground, and they’re the only ones on this road as far as Jonny can see. It’s surreal and serene all at once. It’s like the chaos of the night didn’t happen, like there hadn’t been riots in the streets of Chicago, at the airport. Here, it’s as if the world isn’t ending.

It’s fucking scary.

The radio is still on. “ _—The final mission to save mankind has failed—_ ”

“Fuck you!” Patrick hits it again.

“Stop it! This is my car, asshole.”

Patrick twists abruptly in his seat. “Who gives a shit about your fucking _car_ , Jon.”

Jonny clenches his jaw and he tightens his hands on the wheel. He stares at the road and inhales deeply.

“Yeah, take a deep breath.” Patrick’s voice is mean and full of mockery. “Find your zen, Jonathan.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“No, you go fuck yourself, I’m never gonna see my family again.”

It has hung unsaid between them all night, dark and heavy, and Jonny can’t stay mad in the face of it. He glances at Patrick, sees his red-rimmed eyes, the dark circles under them, and he knows the expression there too well. He’s seen it on his mother’s face, on David’s, on his own in the reflection of a hospital room window. 

“Pull over,” Patrick says, low, and Jonny complies right away, has barely stopped the car before Patrick’s unbuckled his belt, opened the door, and puked into the grass. His shoulders are so wide. 

Jonny reaches out and stretches his hand over Patrick’s spine, but Patrick shrugs him off, gets out of the car and closes the door loudly enough that Jonny cringes.

He listens to the announcement twice more on the radio and hopes for some kind of change— _actually, never mind, we miscalculated and all’s good, the damn rock won’t hit us_. He’ll step out of the car and tell Patrick, and they’ll drive back to Chicago so Patrick can fly to Hawaii to see his family and Jonny will leave for Winnipeg and they’ll meet again in the fall for training camp. 

But the announcement is the same and Jonny is still going to die in three weeks and he doesn’t know how to help Patrick. 

Jonny presses his forehead to the wheel and closes his eyes. The silence rings in his ears now that they’ve stopped shouting. He takes out his phone and checks if his mom’s replied to him. Nothing. He still types, _On my way. Kaner’s with me._

The air is cool when he gets out and he shivers in his t-shirt. It’s still only April after all, even if it’s unusually warm this year. Birds sing in the trees nearby like any normal day. They have no idea. Lucky fuckers, he thinks.

On the other side of the car, Patrick sits on the wet, cold slope of the ditch some feet away by the shade of the trees.

“You’ll freeze your ass off,” Jonny says. He sits down, elbows on knees, and leans a little to the side to nudge him.

Patrick runs a hand over his face, then through his hair. Both of them are so much balder than they used to be. Jonny’s always wondered if they’d eventually look like their dads.

“We’ll die with most of our hair intact. Sort of,” he says out loud, and it makes no sense, out of the blue, but Patrick still huffs a laugh.

“You know I would have rocked that bald head, man.”

“Sure, buddy.”

A car drives by behind them and Jonny listens to its sound until it’s only them and the birds and the soft creaking of the bare trees in the breeze once more. He pulls at dry turf between his feet. The sky is lightening but down here, so close to the trees, it’s still gloomy with lingering night.

“You know, we were so happy when Erica got a job in Hawaii,” Patrick starts. “Jacks said it was the perfect excuse to go all the time. She’s the one who came up with the annual Kane Hawaii Vacation.”

“Yeah.”

“And like, when mom got sick we all agreed it was a great idea for her and dad to move there, and it’s helped her a lot, the weather and all. They’ve got a nice place, too.”

Jonny nudges him again. “You took great care of them, Patrick.”

“It’s a good place to be.” Patrick sniffles, runs his hand over his nose.

“There are worse places to spend the end of the world, for sure.”

“Like Winnipeg, with your sorry ass.”

Jonny shoves him and Patrick falls to the side without resisting. He laughs and the sound of it is too loud and kind of off, but it’s good to hear it after a night of silence. 

“Any news from your mom?” Patrick asks, eyes on the sky.

“Not yet.”

Jonny gives him his hand and helps him get up. There are blades of grass stuck to their butts, and Jonny’s is wet and cold, so he opens the backdoor, gets a pair of jeans out and changes there, by the side of the road.

“I think I puked a little in the car,” Patrick says, and Jonny rolls his eyes at him.

“Who gives a shit about the car.”

 

◉

 

They pass two gas stations before they run out of gas.

The first one is closed. The second one isn’t, but there’s no sight of any employees. They call out through the store, but no one answers, and neither of them can figure out how to unlock the pumps. 

“Hopefully the next one will still be working.” Patrick’s arms are full of bags of chips and candy, and he says, “What?” with feigned innocence when Jonny raises an eyebrow at him, and then, “I’m hungry.”

He’s not sure why he does it, but Jonny steps around the counter and grabs a pack of cigarettes, shrugging when it’s Patrick’s turn to judge him. “It’s not like it matters.”

Except for the junk food and the cigarettes, this could be any normal day for them. They always give each other shit for their respective choices because they can, because they always have. Because they always could, and knew that the other would have their back no matter what, and would never shy away from pushing back if needed. And if Jonny strains hard, he can nearly make himself believe it _is_ a normal day—the two of them on a short, whacky road trip to Jonny’s hometown. 

He leaves two $50 bills on the counter.

The car gives its last effort just outside a small town Jonny missed the name of. He drives it to the side of the road where it stops, completely empty.

“Get your stuff,” Jonny says. “Maybe someone will have some canisters, but if they don’t maybe we can, I don’t know, buy a car or something.”

Patrick hits the hood hard with the flat of his hand on his way past. “Bye, Jonny’s car.”

It’s full morning now, sun bright and warm. There are buds on the trees. Life doesn’t stop even for the end of the world, and he has to stop thinking it, has to just—move forward. Find a car, drive to Winnipeg, get to his family, help Patrick. Simple steps. 

“You were wrong,” Patrick says. “Climate change didn’t kill us.”

In reply, Jonny takes out the pack of cigarettes he put in the side pocket of his bag along the Bic lighter and unwraps the plastic, balls it into his hand. He’s about to shove it in the grocery bag when he stops and then, very deliberately, watching himself do it, he drops the plastic on the ground. 

Patrick snorts, a mean, derisive sound that Jonny finds satisfaction in, and drops his Mars bar wrapper on the ground as well. “Bye, planet, I guess.”

Jonny stares at both wrappers on the ground and thinks of his Tesla still in his building’s garage in Chicago. Of his garden and all the money he’s spent on organic food, on local, fair trade products. He thinks of the plans he had drawn for a sustainable cabin for his retirement, and the solar panels he had installed two years ago at the lake house. 

He thought he was making a difference.

“A fucking rock, man. What the fuck,” he says dully, turning the pack of cigarettes in his hands. He opens it, takes off the foil paper and lets it fall at his feet as well.

“You know what’s fucked up? They fucking called it Matilda. That’s a children’s book. Jess loved it when she was little and she wouldn’t stop watching the movie. It’s… sweet. Pretty. It always makes me think of her…” His voice trails off, and he swallows hard, bends forward, hands on his knees and a “shit” between his teeth. He spits on the road.

The thing with Patrick is that while he’s never been shy about his emotions on most occasions, as his friend you have to know when he’ll listen to what you have to say and when you’re more likely to get told to fuck off. 

Not knowing which it is now bothers Jonny, so he looks away and takes a cigarette out, holds it between two fingers. “Should have called it something more impressive,” he says to the trees. “Conan the Destroyer.”

“He was a barbarian,” Patrick replies to the ground. 

“Whatever.”

A breeze rises and the wrappers still at Jonny’s feet twitch, then are lifted up and carried away across the road. He could just pick them up, but fuck it. Fuck all of it. He puts the pack in his pocket and the cigarette between his lips. He turns against the wind and lights up, takes a long drag and chokes on the smoke. He coughs, eyes watering, but soon settles into it.

“Give me one,” Patrick says, and then, “this is really fucking weird,” once he’s lit his own and they’ve started walking again, smoking their cigarettes in tandem. They’ve never done this together, and it’s odd enough it’s close to pleasant. Like this is not them.

The smoke’s fucking terrible for Jonny’s lungs and it tastes like crap and he doesn’t care. He’s never gonna play hockey again.

The gas station is right at the town’s entrance and there’s no one there. The two pumps are old, the pavement cracked, and there are metal bars on the windows. 

“Shit.” Jonny gives the locked door another strong pull. “Might have to knock on some doors.”

“You looking for gas?” 

A man stands on the veranda of the house across the street, hands on the railing. Jonny waves.

“Yes,” he says, crossing over. “We ran out just outside of town.”

“Where you guys going?” The man’s eyes widen once Jonny and Patrick are on his lawn. “Well I’ll be. It’s Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.”

The man’s name is Harold and he invites them in. He’s an old man with thin white hair and clean shaved cheeks and faded overalls. He has a Blackhawks clock on his kitchen wall and a framed purple Hockey Fights Cancer Hossa jersey in the living room. Jonny hasn’t heard from Hoss in months—the last time they talked was just after Christmas. They mentioned meeting up this summer

“Where are you going?” Harold asks again as he hands them a cold beer each after waving at them to sit on the floral sofa. Jonny takes it but doesn’t drink. Patrick downs half of his fast and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Winnipeg,” Jonny says. “We had to leave quick and we ran out of gas.”

Harold nods. “Saw it on TV this morning. Some stations are still giving the news. It’ll calm down soon, I reckon, people are just scared and shocked right now. Got some trouble of our own last night as well, it’s probably like that everywhere.”

“It was time to leave.” Jonny’s aware of how silent Patrick is beside him. Harold’s clearly aware of it too, eyes darting between them. He clears his throat and takes a swig of his own beer. 

“Bit early for these, but considering…”

The small talk makes Jonny itch under his skin, but it comes easy, rote. He’s almost grateful for the reprieve.

“No offence,” Harold says, “but you both look like hell warmed over. Have you slept?”—Jonny shakes his head—“Eaten?”—shakes it again—“then stay. There’s a bed downstairs for you to sleep in if you don’t mind sharing. It’s cool and dark, you should be comfortable. You can have food after and I’ll see to your gas issue.”

Something catches in Jonny’s throat. His beer is wet and cold between his hands and he shivers, unable to speak. He wants to tell Harold he doesn’t have to, that they should try to get to Winnipeg as fast as possible, but the mention of sleep is all it takes for the exhaustion of the night to crash over him, heavy and grim, a pressure that squeezes the air out of him.

“Thank you,” Patrick says, eyes meeting Jonny’s. “We don’t mind sharing.”

Harold takes them down a flight of steep stairs. He wasn’t lying when he said it was cool—it’s not a finished basement. They’ve set a large rug over the cement in the room and a sofa Harold unfolds with a strident, metallic sound, its joints rough and stiff.

“Bathroom’s here.” Harold turns on the light in the next room and gets sheets and comforters out from a cupboard behind the door. They make the bed in silence. 

“There. I’ll leave you to sleep. I can see you’re about to collapse. Don’t worry about the car issue, I’ll figure that out for you, won’t be a problem. You just rest.”

If he wasn’t so tired, Jonny could have cried.

The mattress is narrow and there’s no way they can avoid touching. Proximity has never been a problem between them, though they haven’t done this since their early years in the league. 

He takes his time to undress, his back to Patrick, deeply aware of the cool air on his bare skin.

He used to do it on purpose, get half naked in their room, even before they started fucking. He knew it made Patrick hot, could see it in his eyes, could see the shape of his half-hard dick in his pants. And all those showers… Jesus, did he think Jonny was an idiot? They were both so horny and always high on hockey and winning, always so wound tight from the pressure and the excitement. It all had to come out somehow, and Patrick was right there, willing and near, and the only one who could really understand everything, even this fucked-up thing between them that Jonny remembers with shame and a deep ache between his lungs. 

He hasn’t touched Patrick that way in over a decade but just the thought of it now makes him warm. Heat creeps up his neck in the kind of flush he used to hate getting, his body betraying how much he wanted it, this thing—this person—he hated wanting. 

Patrick gets under the covers behind him and Jonny turns around, slides under as well. The bed’s old and dips in the middle, and their sides press together. They move around and try to settle but it makes the worst kind of racket possible.

“Christ, if we don’t stop moving, Harold’s gonna think we’re fucking,” Patrick says. He’s on his back and Jonny can barely see his profile in the dark. His skin is soft and warm except for a cold patch on his thigh where it touches Jonny’s knee.

It was always easy to fall asleep beside him—it takes Patrick no time at all and when he does, he breathes slow and deep and steady. Jonny used to try and match the rhythm with his own, to focus on it until he was asleep too. He’s never told Patrick about it. He had to get himself a white noise machine for when he was home and when they stopped rooming together. 

“Last time we did this,” Patrick says just as Jonny’s drifting off and the sound of his voice kicks him back awake, “you had just fucked my mouth raw.” 

“Jesus.”

They haven’t talked about this since they stopped hooking up. They always change the subject when it comes up (it almost never does), and any attempt at discussing what they were doing when they were still doing it always devolved into rough fucking. Everything they did was rough and sharp and angry. 

Patrick shifts. The frame and springs creak. Jonny wants to reach out and press his hand in the middle of Patrick’s chest to keep him still. It’s a wonder neither of them has run away yet. 

He wishes he could see Patrick’s face now so he could judge if it’s too far when he licks his lips and asks, low, “You ever do it again? With other guys, I mean.”

“I’m not gay.” 

Patrick used to say that a lot and often. Jonny didn’t give a fuck because he wasn’t either. On any given day, he just wanted to get his dick sucked. 

“Didn’t say you were.”

“You?” Patrick asks, too fast, before Jonny’s even done talking. 

“No.” He thinks of stopping there, but the basement is dark, and Patrick’s warm against him, and they’re both dying soon—they are, he can’t take it out of his head. They are. They are going to die. “I did think about it, a few times.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Nothing I acted on. Wasn’t worth it, you know?”

He hears Patrick’s swallow. There’s a long silence and then, “Yeah, I know,” more breath than sound.

Jonny doesn’t dwell on that part of his life if he can help it. On all the things he wanted, how ashamed he felt about wanting them, and how none of it went away once he wasn’t getting on Patrick Kane’s dick anymore. 

He thinks about it now, though. About what they used to do and how long it’s been since he’s sucked a dick. It’s difficult to ignore, with Patrick so close to him this way. Difficult to not remember the ache he’d felt in moments just like this one, in bed beside him in the dark, asshole still raw from Patrick’s cock or dick still sticky-wet from his mouth, a hand on Patrick’s chest so he could match the rise and fall of it and fall asleep.

“Anyway,” Patrick says, cutting through Jonny’s thoughts and the heavy silence. “Let’s sleep. I’m fucking beat.” 

He turns on his side so that all Jonny can see now is the wide expanse of him, and Jonny has the wild impulse to say ‘no, wait,’ to pull Patrick over, to make him talk more about it. He goes as far as raising his hand, but stops. They’ve never talked about it this way, not once, but Jonny’s never wanted to talk about it, either. It was better kept unspoken and buried and not thought about too often, and he’s too tired for this. He wouldn’t have the words anyway.

Maybe Patrick’s already asleep, but he doesn’t push Jonny off when Jonny curls in and lightly presses his forehead against Patrick’s back. It’s easy to follow the rhythm of his breathing like this. Easy to fall asleep, too. 

Easy to sleep the whole afternoon and all night without stirring or dreaming. He’s only woken up by an urgent need to piss at 5AM. When he reaches out behind him, his hand only meets empty space.

He groans, runs a hand over his face. The tile on the bathroom wall is cold against his cheek and wakes him up further as he leans on it over the toilet. He gets dressed, and wonders how long he could stay in this basement and pretend he’s still asleep. He puts the sofa back together, then sits. It’s as uncomfortable as the bed was, but he doesn’t want to leave it. If he could just stay here, could just—

No. 

He blinks at the bright light of his phone, at the lack of notifications. He tries to write a short email again: _Where are you?_ he types to his mom in French, thumbs urgent and clumsy. _Are you okay? I’m driving up to Winnipeg. Patrick’s with me. Is David with you? I’m coming. I’ll be there soon. I hope you get this._

He’s careful on the way up the stairs but it’s unnecessary; Harold and a woman he assumes is his wife are both at the table in the kitchen when he opens the door. The woman smiles and lowers her mug.

“We didn’t want to wake you up,” she says and extends her hand. “I’m Margaret.”

“Where’s—”

“Outside.” Harold tilts his head toward the door.

Patrick’s on the porch, head pressed against one of the posts, eyes closed.

“Hey,” Jonny says, stepping close so only Patrick can hear him. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Before Patrick can answer, Margaret pushes the screen door open to tell them breakfast is ready. “You boys hungry?”

“Oh god, yes please,” Patrick says. He walks past Jonny, but quirks his mouth at him in acknowledgement, not a smile, just one of his tics Jonny knows well by now. He looks tired and drawn and Jonny wonders just how much he slept.

At the table, the politeness slips off him effortlessly. He’s done this all his life but the normalcy scratches at his brain, like a fingernail on a stitched wound, tugging, tugging until it bleeds. He wants to linger and pretend. He wants to leave.

The pale morning light comes in through the window over the sink and even though the nights are still chilly, it’s cranked open halfway. Sweet air comes in. It smells of spring, of things that grow. It hasn’t snowed around these parts recently, but it feels like the world is still getting unstuck from its frozen state, slow to drag itself out of bed.

When he was young, Jonny loved this time of year even though it meant the end of winter and the rink in the backyard. In Winnipeg, and in the 90s, it happened later in the year than it does here and now, but he was always happy to switch his winter boots for rain boots and to get stuck in the mud of the melted rink.

He’s 7 years old and David’s 5. They’re playing outside and David’s boot gets stuck in the mud. When he pulls hard, his foot comes out with a loud squelch and he falls on his butt. Jonny laughs and goes to help him up, raising his knees high like a soldier. One, two, one, two. David glares at him and throws mud in his face.

Jonny takes his phone out of his pocket to check it. When he looks up, he meets Patrick’s eyes and shakes his head. He swallows his last egg in one bite and washes it down with orange juice. 

“Have you, uh, figured out where we can get some gas?“ 

“Right.” Harold wipes his mouth and pushes his chair back. “Come with me.” He leads them outside to the curb where an old Ford pickup is parked. “Take my truck.”

“Oh, we can’t—“

“Sure you can. The tank’s full, even if you avoid the main roads, you should be able to make it a good ways into Wisconsin, maybe even Minnesota. There are a few things in the back—jump cables, tire pump, jack, baseball bat. Hope you won’t be needing that…” 

“We can pay you.”

“Son.” Jonny stills. The last person to call him that was his dad. “I don’t need the damn truck or your money. Margaret’s got a car and her brother lives down the road and he’s got another one. We’re fine. Just take it.”

“Thank you.” Patrick takes the keys from Harold and opens the door to drop their bags and groceries on the backseat. He’s calm—so fucking calm—the way he can be sometimes, all coiled tight inside himself.

“Here.” Jonny hands Harold the keys of his own car. “Take these. The car’s just outside of town. If you ever need it, all it needs is gas in the tank. And if there’s anything we can do for you…”

“Come back inside. Sign a few things for us, and Margaret will want a picture. We can still brag we’ve met two of the biggest hockey stars out there.”

Behind him, Jonny checks his phone again—no news—and whispers, “Five minutes,” to Patrick as they follow. Patrick nods and brushes their arms together. 

They sign the purple jersey. Jonny taps his finger over Hoss’ name and hopes wherever he is, he’s happy before the end. Margaret’s brother comes in, his family in tow, just as they’re done and they take more pictures, sign more caps and jerseys. 

Jonny wants to rip the stitches open. But he smiles instead. Shakes hands. Hugs Margaret.

They’re down the porch steps when Harold stops them.

“Thank you,” he says.

“The least we could do,” Patrick says, but Harold shakes his head. He pushes his hands into his pockets.

“No, not that. The games, the hockey. Thank you for that. We’ve had great moments together, you know, all of us together around the TV, watching you boys win. Taking trips to the UC. That’s how our daughter met her husband, you know. You might not be aware of it, and I’m not very good at saying these things, but things being what they are, I think you should know. It’s meant a lot to us over the years.”

Jonny’s shaky inside when he takes Harold’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure. All of it.”

Harold claps his hand between his. “Good.”

They wave at them all from the truck’s windows and then they’re on the road. 

“Bye, Harold. Bye, Margaret,” Patrick says with a glance in the rearview mirror.

 

◉

 

There’s a map of the Midwest in the glovebox of the truck and Jonny uses it to guide Patrick through back roads. The interstate probably isn’t as busy now but they’re doing good time, so neither of them suggests they change their route.

The day is brighter and warmer than yesterday, and Jonny wonders idly if it’s like this everywhere. If the universe is giving them something beautiful before it takes all of it away. It’s not like those days he loved as a child anymore. It’s just mockery. Isn’t the world magnificent? 

One of the pictures Harold’s son-in-law showed them was of him and his wife at the bar where the Hawks partied after their cup win in 2015. 

They used to frequent it a lot when they were younger—him, Patrick, other guys on the team. Most of them single and looking to pick up, and for over two years, the person Jonny would pick up more often than not was Patrick. They’d share a taxi, drunk and sweaty, their shirts stuck to their backs, and they’d fuck in one of their condos with the lights out and the taste of booze in their mouths. At times so drunk they could only grind their cocks together in the dark.

“Fuck you,” Patrick would say, biting into Jonny’s shoulder, and Jonny knew he meant it. He knew because he felt the same way when he inevitably replied,

“Fuck you back, asshole,” and then, “harder.”

It was always good, even this way.

The bar doesn’t exist anymore. It closed down a few years back, and it’s unnerving to think about, all these places that stopped existing before the end of the world. The places he remembers so well: the elementary school he went to, the old rink, Johnny’s Ice House, countless restaurants he loved. He’d celebrated one of the greatest moments of his life at that place. 

He doesn’t know why it makes him sad when none of it will matter soon. These places were real but aren’t anymore, they’re just more stories to tell people about, more stories they won’t understand, only indulging him with some ‘sounds great, man’ platitude. 

“Remember Pony?” he says to Patrick out of nowhere, in the silence of the car.

Patrick throws him a quick, confused look. Jonny has the sudden, irrational certitude that he might cry if Patrick says he doesn’t remember. There are important things he knows he’s forgotten. There are places he can’t recall.

They’re 27 years old and it’s 2015 and they’ve just won the cup. They’re partying it up and they don’t fuck anymore but Patrick’s body is firm against Jonny’s side. He smiles up at him, his fists tight in Jonny’s shirt, and yells, “you and me again, Jonny boy!” and Jonny, in the drunken euphoric haze of the night, wants on his dick again so bad, wants all of him again. He can’t remember if he’s ever stopped. You and me, he’d said. You and me.

“The bar?” Patrick says, and when Jonny nods, adds, “Yeah. It’s a pizzeria now.”

Jonny waits for him to add more, but nothing comes. He turns back to the window, something small and disappointed coiling in his stomach. It was just a place, after all. 

It’s another few minutes and then, “Maybe that’s what the aliens will say.”

“What?”

“You know...” Patrick waves at the road in front of them. “Hey remember Earth? Yeah, it’s a pizzeria now.”

The laugh that comes out of Jonny is short and sharp, surprised out of him like a painful hiccup. It seizes at his chest and makes all his muscles clench. It scrapes his throat too, like it has pointy corners, hysterical and too loud. But it’s followed by another and another and another until Jonny’s laughing so much he has tears in his eyes and his stomach hurts and he’s clutching at the dashboard, head bowed down towards his knees.

“It’s a pizzeria now,” he gasps, and Patrick cracks up too. So much, he has to swerve onto the side of the road and put the truck in park. 

His eyes are bright blue in the sunlight, face split up in a wide laugh that sounds as manic as Jonny’s. Patrick’s always had the most beautiful smile Jonny’s ever seen, though he’s never told anyone, barely acknowledged it to himself, but it seems stupid to no admit to it right now, even if it’s just in his own head. It makes him laugh more, somehow, tears streaming down his face.

They cross into Wisconsin soon after.

“Bye, Illinois,” they yell together, still riding that silly, manic edge.

Bye, Illinois. Bye, Chicago. Bye, hockey. It’s been good. It’s been real good.

 

◉

 

_Last time we did this, you had just fucked my mouth raw._

Jonny can’t stop thinking about it. 

His brain replays the conversation they had in bed yesterday over and over. He still remembered. After all these years, and Patrick knew exactly how they’d fucked that last night before they decided it was enough. They’d had enough. Time to grow up. 

Jonny wasn’t even sad about it, only grimly satisfied that he could walk away from it without effort after two years of them fucking each other. So pleased at how easy he found it to quit all of it. A shrug. A ‘yeah, okay.’ His gay phase over with a two-minute conversation and a strange sense of relief. He didn’t need dick. He didn’t need Patrick Kane. Not like that. 

But he wants it now. He wants dick. The old desire sits obvious in his mind in a way it hasn’t in years. He squirms uncomfortably in his seat, in the familiar and shameful heat of it. 

It wasn’t hard to focus only on what mattered most, which was hockey and the team. He was good at it. But even all his avoidance couldn’t change that he sometimes missed it. Enough to press toys inside himself in the dark of his bedroom, but not enough to stop telling himself he was just another straight dude who happened to enjoy anal. 

But now… now it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. 

He wants it before they all die—a dick in his mouth or in his ass or whatever else—like cigarettes and candy and a road trip across Wisconsin with Patrick. Almost normal. The need blooms fast inside him like weeds, taking space in all the cracks he’s only been patching up over the years. 

“Oh shit.” Patrick’s voice cuts through Jonny’s thoughts. He opens his eyes and straightens up from his slouch against the window. “This Denny’s is totally open. You know what would be amazing?”

“Hamburger,” Jonny says right away. 

“Yeah, but… you sure? Isn’t it gonna make you sick?” He turns into the parking lot anyway and stops the truck in the back beside a red Tercel.

“Hamburger.” 

He might regret it later but he’s gonna do it. Right now. Truth is, he should try to avoid more regrets—it would probably be the healthy way to spend the rest of his life—but he might regret not having that hamburger more and, fuck it, he wants it. There’s no time. 

The Denny’s is bumping. 

They can hear loud bass from outside. Everything else is quiet, there aren’t even any cars on the road. It’s just them, side by side in front of a Denny’s, and the pounding of the music, like they’re about to enter a club and not a restaurant.

“Uuuuuh.”

“It’s one of those, eh?” 

They’d heard they were all over the place, but Jonny had only known about those in Chicago. He’d fished one of the rookies out of a Wendy’s two weeks ago, high out of his mind. He’d had to sober him up, then he put him on a plane to Russia. At most, he was in there for five minutes.

“D’you think they still serve food?”

Jonny shrugs and reaches for the door. Inside, the lights are low, the employees wear glow sticks and the EDM track is deafening.

“Hi!” a girl in a Denny’s uniform greets them immediately. She has a large smile, three fluorescent necklaces, freckles on her flushed cheeks, and her messy hair piled up high on her head. “Welcome to Denny’s! How can I help you?”

Patrick glances at Jonny, and then shouts, “Food?”

“Sure!” Her name tag says her name’s Laurie. She smiles wide at them and blinks fast.

Patrick shoves his hands in his pockets and leans toward her. “Uh, two people.” She nods, waits some more. “A booth if you have one.”

“Sure do!” She’s as chipper as they come and high as a kite. Patrick widens his eyes at him, but Jonny just pinches his lips together.

They sit in front of each other and she asks them what they want to drink. Patrick orders a cherry coke and Jonny a root beer. 

“Oh good choice,” she says, then giggles and leans her hip heavily on the table. Jonny shuffles over so he can catch her if she falls over, which is a strong possibility. “That’s such a good choice, I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she’s far away, Jonny sees more than hears the soft, incredulous laugh Patrick lets out. “Oh my god!”

It’s not as if they’ve never partaken in their share of questionable parties, it’s that it’s never felt this way, public and obvious and in spaces where it’s definitely not expected to see someone do a line of coke on the edge of a table. The music is way too loud and the place is packed, people dancing everywhere, including on tables. A guy sits not far from them with five hamburgers and fries in front of him and a joint lit on the edge of the table, a blissed out expression on his face that says he’s found nirvana early.

Laurie comes back with their drinks and takes their order, blinking happily at them as they scream over the noise. Jonny points to the table where the dude is having a spiritual experience with fast food and weed in hope that it’s clearer this way.

There’s a lull at the start of the next track so Patrick asks, “How long have you guys been doing this?” and when Laurie cocks her head to the side, confused, her soft, dopey smile intact, he waves at the restaurant.

Her mouth and eyes open up comically when she catches on and then she laughs. “It’s been, I don’t know, a week? Mike, that’s the manager, he just left, you know, because of the…” she points at the ceiling and makes another face like somehow the asteroid can hear her and its name is Voldemort. “So we thought we’d have some fun! And people just kept coming! I think the word got out or something? Anyway, I’ll be right back with your food, enjoy yourselves!”

Jonny takes a large sip of his drink and savours the fizz in his mouth, the way it goes up his nose. It’s pure sugar. Patrick taps his foot under the table. It bumps against Jonny’s leg, but he doesn’t move it away. In the low light, Patrick’s softer, not as tired and tense as he’s looked for weeks now. 

They used to party a lot. They’d drink, dance—do drugs at times—because they were fucking NHL stars and they could. Girls everywhere, all up on them, but it’s Patrick he remembers most when he lets himself dwell on it—fucking each other after a night out, his heart pumping harder, faster. It was good. He didn’t want to admit to it, but it was. 

Patrick gazes at him from across the table, head tipped back and eyes hooded, and Jonny gets hot, feels the flush crawl up his neck again.

They’re 23 years old and Patrick is on his knees in front of him. Outside, it snows over Montreal. Patrick’s red across the nose, a line of heat Jonny wants to touch with his fingertips. His chin is messy, spit-slick the way it always gets when he sucks on Jonny’s dick. He parts his mouth, sticks his tongue out flat. He wants it. He wants Jonny to come onto it. He wants Jonny’s jizz over his face. Jonny’s stunned, and overwhelmed for a second, but he does it. He watches as Patrick’s eyes flutter closed when the first streak hits his cheekbones. Watches as he takes it. As he opens up soft and wet when Jonny tangles his fingers in his hair and presses the head of his dick over Patrick’s mouth to squeeze the last drops over it. 

Jonny shifts on the bench. His blush spreads in his core, down between his legs. He can’t stop thinking about it. 

Patrick licks his lips and leans forward over the table, “Do you—“ 

He’s interrupted by Laurie, plates in hands. She deposits them on the table with a flourish and all of Jonny’s attention is suddenly on his hamburger. 

He doesn’t even know why he wants one so bad right now. He lost taste for this kind of food a long time ago. He’s had gluten free burgers and they were excellent, but in general it’s not a craving he has anymore. He craves this one right now, though, like he imagines a man in the desert craves water. 

“There you go!” Laurie drops two joints and a bottle of percocet between them. “On the house! Woo!”

Patrick takes the bottle and shakes it. “Woo, Jonny! Woo!” he yells. It’s hard to read his face, hard to tell if he’s amused or disgusted or tired or everything all at once, so Jonny just yells back, 

“You’re a fucking idiot!” and picks up his burger between his hands.

It’s the greatest and most disgusting thing he’s ever eaten and he basically inhales it. Grease runs down his chin and god, this’ll hurt later, but for now—and isn’t that the important part, now, right now, and not later because there won’t be a later—he enjoys every gross bite of it. When he looks up, he catches Patrick sneaking a picture of him on his phone. Jonny opens up his mouth wide to show him his half-chewed bite. Patrick grimaces and gives him the finger.

It’s normal enough, this short moment between them, to forget why they are here. He wonders, as he watches Patrick shove fries in his mouth, if this is what it could have been if they hadn’t played hockey. It’s a silly idea. He’s not even sure what he means by ‘could have been’. They could never have been—could never have met—in any other way than exactly how it happened. 

When they’re done, Patrick grabs the two joints, slips them in his wallet, and leaves the bottle of pills on the table.

Just as Laurie comes back to take their plates away, a male employee sidles up behind her and starts kissing her neck. She drops the plates back down on the table, noisy over the music—the bass so heavy, Jonny can feel the vibrations through the floor and his bench. She tips her head to the side to give the guy more space, and when he uses his teeth, her lips part on a moan that Jonny can’t hear. The guy lifts her up and drops her back down on the table—Patrick catching a plate from under her just in time—hand already between her legs.

They stare at each other over their bodies until Patrick slowly nods his head toward the exit and they stand together. 

All across the restaurant, customers have started kissing and touching. They grind against each other to the strong beat, hands up shirts and skirts or down pants. The two couples in the next booth make out while the man at the table in front watches them, a hand in his jeans. 

Jonny’s more baffled than aroused, and yet, for a split second, he could take part in it. He could walk to the guy smoking a blunt with his eyes closed in the far corner. Could climb into his lap and grind there while shotgunning smoke from his mouth. 

Patrick touches his arm. “I think this is our cue.” 

Jonny shivers, shakes his head. “Yeah,” and then, “Gotta take a leak, meet you outside.”

He sags against the closed bathroom door and breathes deeply, only barely noticing the guy standing at the sink. Even though music’s only muffled, it feels blissfully quiet in here. If he didn’t know any better this would be exactly like when he was out with the guys, in some club or another, in some city or another. His guys. His team. 

He hasn’t heard from any of them since he left. 

Jonny takes a piss. He tucks himself back in and, when he turns around, catches the guy staring at his ass. He doesn’t even look guilty about it, just leans against the sink, legs wide and hard dick obvious.

They’re 21 and drunk again, both of them crammed in a tiny bathroom in a Las Vegas club, and Patrick’s hand is on his head, fingers curled in his hair. The floor’s hard and cold under Jonny’s knees. Sober, he’d worry about this. Sober, he’d think this is the most dangerous shit they’ve ever pulled. But Patrick’s hips lift off the wall and his hard dick skids across Jonny’s cheek and Jonny’s punched solid in the stomach by it, hot and hard between his thighs. “Hurry,” Patrick keeps repeating. “Hurry, hurry,” and “take it, suck it, Jonny, come on, hurry.”

He doesn’t hesitates. It’s been in his head for hours. For years even, tucked away neatly at the back. He steps forward and gets on his knees, gets his hands in the guy’s pants, and takes his dick out. The floor is hard and cold and dirty.

It’s like riding a fucking bike.

He remembers how to do this perfectly, as if he’s done it every day of his life, but he’d forgotten how into it he gets. How he’d always loved blowing Patrick. 

His mouth isn’t as used to it anymore. His jaw aches right away so he gets his hand around the guys’ dick and licks instead—first, low with his mouth at his balls, then higher, a good rub of the head over his lips. 

He’s missed it so much. 

“Dude,” the guy says above him, breathless. He has an idiotic look on his face that pleases Jonny until he adds, “You’re Jonathan Toews.”

Panic flashes through him lightning-quick, and he pulls off the guy’s dick. He’s about to stand up and walk out when he remembers: it doesn’t matter anymore. God, why would it matter. Everything he had to lose, he’s lost already. 

“Yeah,” he says, and tips forward again, knees hitting the floor hard.

“You like dick?”

“Yeah.” He sucks on the head, tastes precome on his tongue and closes his eyes against a wave of choking fear and relief. 

“Oh, man.” The guy gets his hand back over Jonny’s head, guides him towards his balls. “Wait ’til I tell the boys.”

“Okay,” Jonny says, too low for the guy to hear him, mouthing at the base of the dick. “Tell fucking everyone, I don’t care.”

The door opens and heavy music floods the room. 

Patrick. 

He stands frozen in the doorway, mouth parted in shock, and Jonny watches the picture of him on his knees, on a dirty bathroom floor, obviously sucking dick, hit Patrick in the face like a slap. He blinks, looks off to the side, to the wall behind Jonny, then leaves. The door closes silently.

“Wait. Was that Kane?”

Jonny stays frozen for a couple heartbeats before moving again. He flicks his wrist, and starts jerking the guy off. He pushes aside the betrayal etched on Patrick’s face, and the way it twists sharply inside of his chest. 

“Wanna come on my face?” he says, because he wants to get this done, but not enough to leave without finishing what he started. 

It’s Patrick he sees, though, behind his closed eyelids, when jizz hits him across his cheeks. 

Jonny takes a selfie with the guy. Once alone in the bathroom, he washes up. He’s flushed and his mouth is wet and dark. He presses his fingertips to the hinges of his jaw, turns his head to the side, then the other, making sure there’s no jizz left.

That was good, he thinks, watching a drop of water slide down his nose. It was good and you liked it. 

He crosses the Denny’s at a jog to the front door and stumbles into the bright late afternoon sun. The parking lot and the street are quiet, devoid of cars and people. He squints, uses a hand to shield his eyes, and sways on his feet until it stops feeling like he’s stepped into another world or just woke up from a long dream.

He’s half worried Patrick might have left, but he’s sitting in the box of the truck and smoking a cigarette when Jonny turns the corner. He doesn’t even do it right—doesn’t inhale the smoke into his lungs—and what Jonny feels is sad and too close to regret at how much he seems like a kid right now. At how they used to be young and stupid and messy together.

He doesn’t want to apologize for it, not while he’s still half hard in his jeans, but it comes out of him anyway. “Sorry.” 

Patrick sucks on the tip of the cigarette one last time, then flicks it to the side. “What the fuck were you thinking?”. 

“I felt like it.”

Patrick goes stock still. Jonny knows what it means, the flash in his eyes, the moment where everything in Patrick stops moving: he’s mad. 

“You fucking _felt_ like it? For fuck’s sake, Jon, he could have recognized you.”

“He did.”

It would be funny if it weren’t so infuriating and confusing how Patrick goes dumb with surprise, almost as shocked as when he walked in on Jonny.

“He did.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jonny says, suddenly tired and cold, looking past Patrick to the scraggly woods behind the Denny’s and the trash caught in the shrubs and dirt. They can still hear the low bass from inside.

Patrick stays silent and Jonny has to look back at him, at his wide eyes searching Jonny’s face, and Jonny doesn’t know what else to say, except to repeat, “It doesn’t matter,” and then add, “I wanted it and it was good.” He frowns, annoyed at Patrick for making him feel guilty about this. He’s felt enough guilt over it already. “It never bothered you when the dick I was sucking was yours.”

“I’m not gay.”

Patrick’s always had some sort of button: utter the right words, input the right command, and it invariably falls from his lips. He’s not gay. He’s not fucking gay. 

Like Jonny has ever cared about that. 

“Never said you were, Patrick. I’ve never fucking said you were.”

He reaches out and wiggles his fingers until Patrick catches on and gives him the truck’s keys. “Get in the truck or stay there if you want, I don’t care, and I doubt any cops we might pass will care either.”

 

◉

 

Jonny’s stomach wants to kill him.

Which is fair, he totally deserves it, he brought it on himself. Something Patrick likes to remind him again as he knocks on the bathroom door of their motel room, and then adds, “You okay?” in a strange callback to similar situations they’d found themselves in during their roommate years. The reminder annoys him. 

“Let me fucking shit in peace, asshole.”

Patrick _cackles_ as he walks away, and it still sounds off but it’s better than the terse silence in the truck after they left the Denny’s. Better than Patrick’s clenched jaw and hard profile as he stared out the window while Jonny stewed in his own annoyance, pressing his lips together over and over again, unable to get rid of the phantom weight of the dick that had been there.

Nothing is further from his mind right now though, as he rubs his stomach and leans forward to stare at the blank screen of his phone on the floor between his feet. The whole bathroom smells of mildew and bleach. 

Patrick had kept silent when Jonny turned off the road and into the parking lot of a mid-sized motel, only said, “I’ll take care of it,” once Jonny had cut off the engine, giving Jonny a thumbs up when the door to the lobby proved unlocked. The motel was painted a deep, warm brown. It reminded him of the one summer he went to camp, of all the cabins lined up by a lake, names Jonny can’t remember painted in yellow above each of their doors. His chest had seized with a sudden shot of nostalgia. It was stupid. It was fucking stupid. 

He’d almost stepped out of the truck to tell Patrick it was fine, let’s leave, he’s okay, but Patrick had come back with a key and two bottles of water for Jonny. “Owner’s keeping the place open, but no one’s here but us. I got room 19, thought you’d like that.” He handed Jonny one of the bottles.

“I’m not the one obsessed with my own number.”

“Liar.”

It occurs to him that while Patrick’s concern wasn’t out of the norm, his lack of protest was. He hadn’t complained about the hours Jonny had slept away at Harold’s, or when they had stopped at the Denny’s, and he’s not griping about possibly losing another day because Jonny was a greedy idiot. It dawns on him—a horrified lurch in his stomach to go with the cramps—that Patrick’s only along for the ride. It roils inside him, rips bloody like a mouth wound, that these could be Patrick’s last days—stuck in a shit motel room in the middle of Wisconsin while Jonny has a bad case of diarrhea. 

It shouldn’t be this way.

It shouldn’t be this way for any of them. It sucks. It fucking blows. The unfairness of it explodes in him from deep in his ribcage where it sat since he first heard the announcement on TV. He doubles over, gasping, something ugly and bitter he wishes he could spit out thick in his mouth. He tries—grabs the trashcan and spits, gags, spits again. 

A notification chooses that moment to come through. The vibration echoes on the tiles, and Jonny almost kicks his phone away in his haste to pick it up, but catches it with his toe and slides it back toward him, fingers urgent and slippery over it.

It’s from his mother. He clicks past the lockscreen—heart kicking fast, eyes blurring already—and opens up his texts.

 _Jonathan,_ it says, and continues in French, _I’m fine. David is with me. We’re at the lake. I don’t know if you’ll get this before you arrive in Winnipeg. Everything is so slow, I should keep this short. David left a note at the house just in case. We’re fine. If you go home first, say hi to dad for us. Can’t wait to see you (and Patrick). Be careful. I love you._

He’s sick with relief. It leaves him so dizzy he has to spit in the trashcan again. His stomach gives another sharp twist and Jonny presses a hand to it. He gasps at the pain there and then gasps louder at the one in his chest as it spreads hard between his lungs. It pushes and expands and leaves no room for air. 

It’s okay, they’re fine. They’re waiting for him. Waiting so they can be together. So they can die together. 

“Fuck.”

Jonny’s already watched one of his parents die, he doesn’t know if he can do it again, even for one second.

He squeezes his eyes shut, but can’t muffle the sob that comes out of him, shoved out by all the pressure he feels inside. He chokes on the next one, hand and phone against his mouth, plastic pressed hard to his lips, puffing harsh and fast through his nose. His eyes burn. Restraining himself makes the muscles in his abs ache, his stomach still wants to kill him and he’s never been more scared in his life.

He didn’t think he’d ever be more scared than the few days after his car accident, when—as he lay in the dark of his condo with headaches from hell, confused and concussed—he’d thought he’d lost everything: his job, his dream, his self, his mind. Or more scared than on the first morning after his father’s death, filled with the sudden, shattering prospect of the rest of his life without his dad in it.

But he is. He is. He is terrified. 

He’s drowning in his own panic. He knows this from a distant part of his mind that tries in vain to shake him out of it. But he’s never felt this way, and his fear is too oppressive to give him space to breathe. And, distantly, he thinks, _this is how I go. Half-naked on a toilet in a motel in the middle of Wisconsin, three weeks before the apocalypse._. 

No one would call what comes out of him a laugh. It’s only a long, high sound, barely audible, shaken out of him by his own dramatics, but it’s enough. Enough to dislodge something to the side so he can inhale deeply once, twice. His legs shake the way they do after a long game or a hard workout, a tremor he can’t stop.

He’s pushed completely out of it when Patrick bangs on the door—two sharp hits of a fist—and says, “Wifi’s working,” a mix of choked-up urgency and excitement to it. “Password’s ‘fuck you matilda’ no caps, with spaces.”

Jonny straightens up and swallows thickly. He carefully places his phone on the edge of the sink beside him and opens the faucet. He stares at the way the water ebbs and flows over his hand. He lets it run while he kicks off his pants and pulls his shirt off. He doesn’t turn it off when he flushes the toilet and then crawls into the bath and turns the shower on as well.

He curls his legs up toward him, too big for the old, small pink enamel tub that reminds him of his grandparents’ house, before they renovated. He stays there for a long time, but the water is still warm when he turns it off, unfolds himself and climbs out, dripping on the tiles. He turns off the sink faucet as well.

The towel is scratchy and tiny. He has to hold it tight at his waist so it doesn’t fall. 

Patrick throws him a glance when he comes out of the bathroom, looks back at his phone, and then again at Jonny.

“You okay?” The furrow between his eyebrows deepens. The concern is sharp nails over Jonny’s raw skin. He takes a step back, knocks into the wall, and twists around toward his bag on the chair in the corner to disguise his reaction.

“Feeling better.” He searches inside his bag for too long, but eventually grabs a pair of sweats. “What’re you doing?”

“Emails. Calls still not going through, though. Signal’s spotty, it keeps cutting.” There’s a beat. “Sharpy’s in Winnipeg.”

Jonny drops the towel. He counts to ten.

Several years ago, Patrick would be glued to Jonny’s back by now, his half hard dick nudging at Jonny’s naked ass, so fast and eager for it. He’d pressed a hand to the wide space of Jonny’s back so he’d bend forward and grab the chair or the dresser, and he’d do Jonny that way. Always rough about it. Always angry about wanting it, the same way Jonny would hate himself for how he’d done it on purpose in the first place, for how he’d wanted Patrick’s cock inside of him.

Jonny waits too long. Naked with his back turned to Patrick and his sweats in his hands, he waits for it but it doesn’t come—no warm chest against his skin, no hard cock rubbed between his cheeks.

He doesn’t know how else to ask for it. 

When he’s dressed, he turns around and Patrick’s still across the room. He sits against the headboard of his bed, legs stretched in front of him, thumbs flying over his phone. The light from the screen casts weird white highlights on his nose and chin and makes the circles under his eyes darker in contrast. 

Jonny’s phone is still in the bathroom. He should get it, should do the same, but instead he slides over the comforter of his own bed. It’s cool against his warm skin, and he crawls up until his head hits the pillows and he can turn on his back and stare at the water-stained, stucco ceiling. He listens to the silence ring in his ears for several minutes. 

“Got a text from my mom,” he says when he can’t stand it anymore. He doesn’t turn his head, but catches the way Patrick stills out the corner of his eye, how he places his phone down beside him. So he continues, “She’s at the lake house. David too.”

There’s a soft thump as Patrick leans on the headboard. “That’s where you’re going then,” not a hint of a question to it, the lack of ‘we’ now unmistakable.

“Winnipeg first, only for a couple days.” 

He tries to bring it up, to make it okay somehow, and adds, “You don’t have to—“ but cuts himself off, unsure of what he wants to say, breath once again short in his chest. He shifts. The cheap, satiny comforter murmurs under him.

He’s been breathing wrong for days.

Something happened. He doesn’t know when, but something happened inside him. A break of some kind. Maybe it happened when he heard all hope was lost. Maybe it was before, when they learned Matilda was on her way, that they might all die, that his life could soon be over. Maybe he started to crack earlier. Maybe this was inevitable. There’s this urgency inside him, like he’s late, he’s late, he won’t make it. 

All those things he’s kept in, pushed aside for years—the inconvenient thoughts and desires and those stupid, ugly needs he repressed again and again—they want out. And he’s exhausted.

The one rising up his windpipe at this moment is harder to push out than it was to get on his knees and suck a dick in the Denny’s bathroom. But it wants out. It wants out _now_. It’s wrenched away from where it lay quiet all these years, and shoved into his throat. He could swallow it back down, could reach inside himself and press it back where it belongs. But he doesn’t. He stares at the ugly ceiling of this small motel room, and listens to the soft, familiar sound of Patrick in the next bed. Patrick, who had remembered exactly what they had done together that last night. 

It’s too big. Too big to be crammed into the tight space of his windpipe. So tight, it can’t possibly pass through, can’t possibly fit, a square-peg-round-hole situation. It’s going to get stuck there at the back of his mouth, big and black and bitter like the shameful secret it is. 

But Jonny blinks and spreads his hands on the comforter. He runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth like somehow he could catch the end of it and help it along. It knocks against his teeth on the way out and falls heavy, breaks the silence—the fifteen years-long silence between them:

“I wanted it,” he says, surprisingly even. “Back then. Us. Fucking. I wanted it all the time.”

He’s never admitted to it. To anyone, least of all Patrick. Not out loud. 

Jonny doesn’t really want to but he turns his head anyway, cranes his neck and catches Patrick’s gaze already fixed on him. Patrick licks his lips and Jonny’s heart gives a kick, a lurch, like it, too, wants out. The silence stretches and Jonny’s skin starts to prickle uncomfortably. Too familiar shame inches up the back of his neck, but just as he’s about to turn away—when anger starts to spark and he’s annoyed he’s said too much—Patrick says, “I’m sorry,” and catches him off guard. 

“For what?”

“For earlier. At the Denny’s. I shouldn’t—It wasn’t that—I didn’t think—“ He huffs, brows furrowing, and looks down at his hands in his lap. 

Jonny turns on his side. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

“Stop!” Patrick makes a frustrated noise at the back of his throat, pinches his lips together, and clenches his hands into fists. He grits out, “Stop saying that,” slowly through his teeth.

“Why?” 

“Because...” His voice is voice tight and tired. “Because if it doesn’t matter, then what was the point? What was the point to any of it?”

Jonny has no answer.

 

◉

 

He wakes up with a start in the middle of the night, still on his side above the covers. The lights are all off and Patrick is sleeping.

And then he remembers about the WiFi and scrambles off the bed and into the bathroom, grabs his phone off the sink and types ‘fuck you matilda’ with a vicious joy to it.

His phone blows up with notifications. He panics at the noise, still half asleep, and tries to muffle it against his chest. He crosses the room in large steps and leaves, using one of his flip flops to brace the door open a crack.

It’s cold and dark out, and he shivers but sits down on the stoop anyway. The motel’s neon sign buzzes, and it must have rained after nightfall because there are puddles in the parking lot where the lights reflect and stretch. The air smells of fresh, earthy things, and Jonny curls up over his phone and starts reading.

It’s overwhelming at first, all the messages he’s received—all the thank yous and goodbyes and memories. From old coaches and friends and teammates and family members. At one point, he starts crying and has to stop reading, vision too blurry to see.

He scrolls back at the top. One by one, he replies—short messages for the most part—then writes his own emails. 

Bye, Coach. Bye, cousin Mel. Bye, Aunt Marie. Bye, Uncle Pierre. Bye, JohnnyO. Bye, Hossa. Bye, Lapierre. Bye, Benoît. Bye, Hammer. Bye, Steph. Bye, bye, bye, bye. 

He hopes the messages go through, hopes they have wi-fi or electricity. The news he sees quickly when he opens the app says that communication is clogged and difficult, that some places are already without power. It invites people to keep trying and be patient, but Jonny doesn’t read the details. He only stops when his phone is almost out of battery. Out of curiosity, he opens up Twitter, but he can’t make it past the first dozen mentions or so full of gratitude and heartfelt thank yous similar to Harold’s. It’s done. It’s over.

His legs ache and protest, and his ass is cold, but he feels lighter, though bone-deep sad as well. Inside, the room is warm. He plugs his phone in, pulls the covers back and slides under them.

As he’s slipping into sleep, he hears Patrick move, the mattress creak, and then, in the deep silence, “Jon?”

He squints in the dark. There’s the shape of Patrick, the slope and width of one shoulder, and—

They’re 22 years old, barely more than boys and new to this: Patrick whispers his name in the middle of the night and that sound alone—rough and low and scratchy with sleep—spurs Jonny out of his bed and into Patrick’s. Spurs him to slip down Patrick’s body and take his cock in his mouth.

Jonny has one leg off the bed—like his body remembers too. He stops, clenches the sheets in his fist, and says, “Yeah?” instead. He considers it, in the long stretch of silence before Patrick replies. Climb into Patrick’s bed and do it the same way they once did. Wrap his arms around Patrick’s thighs and let them rest on his shoulders while he sucks wet and sloppy over Patrick’s taint.

But Patrick turns on his back, and Jonny doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t even blink. 

Patrick takes a deep inhale, and then, “Me too,” he says, hushed on the exhale. “I wanted it too.”

The confession should feel like a slap to his face. Like someone jumped out of the dark, screamed and scared him out of his skin. It should sting, but it doesn’t. It spreads thick and hot over him and sits heavy on his chest with all the weight only lost things can have. And he wants to ask why they ever stopped, why when they both wanted it, but he knows the answer—at least for himself—and he can’t say it yet, not even now.

 

◉

 

For once, Jonny wakes before Patrick.

The room is dim, the day young and grey. Patrick is pale and tired even when he sleeps, phone in one loose hand like he, too, wrote in the middle of the night. 

When Patrick shows no sign of waking up after a few hours, Jonny sits on the bed and shakes him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. His skin is warm through his shirt, and Jonny wants to linger there, but he pulls away as Patrick blinks awake. 

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says once Patrick has raised himself against the headboard and focuses on him.

“F’what?”

“I’ve been… selfish. And stupid.” He’s thought about it all morning, full of guilt, frantically researching. “I know you’d give anything to see your family again and we should have gone to Milwaukee, should be there right now. We should be asking—“

“I have,” Patrick interrupts, eyes still heavy. “I’ve asked. I called everywhere I could.”

“When?”

“Harold’s. While you were sleeping. They had a landline.”

The circles under Patrick’s eyes are dark and large, every line in his face tired and sad. Jonny turns his phone in his hands instead of what he wants to do, which is to reach for him, soothe him somehow. 

“And?”

“Nothing. No flights in Milwaukee or Minneapolis. Called several other places, most didn’t even pick up the phone.” The tiredness in his voice is as grey as the day outside and has nothing to do with having just woken up, Jonny can tell.

Jonny taps on his phone and opens up his notes. He hands it to Patrick. 

“What’s this?”

“Some airfields between here and Winnipeg. We’ll stop along the way. We’ll ask.”

“Jonny…”

“We’ll double back to Milwaukee first. You never know. Might be a charter plane. A private jet. Someone we can pay.”

Patrick sighs hard through his nose. He closes his eyes. “No one gives a shit about money anymore.”

“Just takes one person who does.” Jonny stands. “We’ll try.”

 

◉

 

They dismiss all the airports that are too far out of the way, and all the ones that flat out told Patrick no when he called them.

“This is too many,” Patrick says, looking at Jonny’s phone, frown on his face. One of his legs bounces nervously. He bites his thumbnail. Jonny hasn’t seen him do that in years. 

“It’s fine.”

“It’ll take you way longer to get to Winnipeg. And we don’t know if—”

“It’s fine,” Jonny repeats, louder. “We’ll find something.”

But Milwaukee is a bust for Hawaii. They do, however, have one last, small flight to Winnipeg—a private plane. Jonny refuses to take it even when Patrick suggests it.

“I can’t just—“ he splutters. “I’m not gonna—“ 

Leave you. 

Patrick shifts from foot to foot in the cold wind blowing outside the Milwaukee airport. “I’m not one of the rookies,” he says with a clip to his voice, a sharp glance. “You don’t have to stay behind for me.”

“I fucking know you’re not.” He hears what Patrick means by it though—that he shouldn’t have stayed in Chicago either. He should have left weeks ago when the season was cancelled, and it fucking hits him sideways that Patrick would think he’s the same, that Jonny’s doing it for the same reasons. “It’s not the same.”

“How so?”

“It just isn’t.”

He just wants Patrick to be happy before the end.

At a tiny airfield near the Minnesota border an old man in overalls comes to greet them. The sky is low and heavy. The wind whips at them across the flat land. “M’not flying you anywhere, if that’s what you want,” he says before they can introduce themselves. “Too old anyway.”

There’s barely any air traffic left according to him. No one wants to leave unless it means flying home, and most people have done that already, or they don’t care enough to do so. “If it’s Hawaii you want, you might have better chance from the West Coast. I thought I’d fly the wife to Mexico, thought it’d be nice to be on a beach at the end, you know, but her sister lives here, and the good old Reverend too. Not much of a fire and brimstone guy myself, but I guess some people think that’s all they have now. She’s scared she won’t make it.”

Jonny’s been careful not to contemplate too closely the whole life-after-death thing since they were told about Matilda. He feels like he’s one wrong thought away from unravelling. Patrick shakes the man’s hand, thanks him anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says when they’re back on the road.

“Not your fault.”

By the time they get to Minneapolis, it’s pouring so hard they might as well be standing under a waterfall. The parking lot is full like the one in Chicago was, and Jonny’s forced to double park again. The place is eerily quiet. It’s empty except for them and a few other hopefuls. A janitor mops the floor just inside the doors and Jonny wants to tell him to go home. He looks away. 

“This is fucking creepy,” Patrick says as they stand in the quiet entrance. They didn’t even bother turning off the lights. “Let’s just go.”

He sees the sign on their way back to the truck, taped to the back window of a small black car. _‘Free car. Take it if you need it. Tank’s full. Have a nice end of the world. George and Louis.’_

Jonny stops and peers into the window. Sure enough, the keys are in the ignition. He tries the door and it opens. 

“What are you doing?” Patrick says.

Jonny takes the keys. “You could use this.”

“What?”

“Take the car.” Jonny walks back to him and hands him the keys. Patrick takes them slowly, brows furrowed. “Drive to California. There’s time. You can find a flight to Hawaii there. You can see your family.”

Patrick stares at the keys in his hand. The rain comes down hard and fills the garage with its sound. It’s loud enough Jonny barely hears it when Patrick says, “I can’t.”

But even if he hadn’t heard it, the way Patrick shoves the keys back at him and shakes them impatiently is clear enough. Jonny takes them from him, confused. “You can’t give up now.” It’s as if he hit gasoline with a lit match. 

Patrick is in his face in one large step, fist tight in Jonny’s sweater. “I’m not giving up,” he says, slow and angry through his teeth. Jonny stares, stunned, aware of how strained Patrick is—just one bad thought away from breaking apart. 

Patrick’s hand tightens, presses hard on Jonny’s shoulder—a solid shove more than a punch—and then he steps back, head low between his shoulders. 

“What if—” Patrick starts. He runs a hand into his hair, eyes darting towards Jonny.

“What?”

“What if there are no flights there.” Patrick turns back to him, tilts his chin up. “Then what, huh? I drive all the way to California on my own, and then what?”

“I don’t—”

“On my own.” He moves his jaw from side to side and presses his lips together, but then adds, louder, “Who the fuck knows how long it’ll take me, too. Roads jammed, gas stations closed, crazy fucking restaurants on benders. What do I do once I’m finally there? Drive through the whole state trying to find some fucking plane? Someone to take me?”

The last word is bounces off the concrete, echoing.

“Pat.”

“What happens, Jonny? What happens when the world ends and I’m stuck there alone?” The last word cracks, resonates ugly and pained.

They’re 26 years old. Don Kane has just died and Jonny stands in the open doorway between their rooms, silent. Patrick sits on the edge of his mattress, head in his hands. He cries, his shoulders shake, and Jonny wants to cross the room to him. He wants to hold him together with his hands. He sees himself do it: on his knees in front of him, touching his face. Simple steps: press him back onto the bed, cover him with his body, keep him together, tell him he’s not alone. Simple. But Jonny does none of it, says nothing, turns away.

“Okay,” Jonny steps closer and squeezes Patrick’s forearm, then slides his hand up to the inside of his bicep. After a beat, Patrick sags against him and Jonny takes all his weight. 

“We can try again in Winnipeg,” Patrick says after a long moment of silence. He pulls away slowly, and Jonny lets his hand drop, fingers still warm.

“Sure.”

Patrick nods, then walks to where the truck’s parked. Jonny watches him, guilty at the relief he feels.

 

◉

 

They stop once at the first open gas station they find, fill up the truck, and buy several canisters that they fill up, just in case.

There are no custom officers to see them through into Canada, but Jonny slows down anyway. He half expects someone to jump out at them or some siren to blare. Nothing happens. He checks the rearview mirror every two seconds after crossing, but nothing happens at all.

Patrick looks behind as well. He twists in his seat and strains his neck.

“Bye, America,” he says. 

Bye.

 

 


End file.
